Typically, during 3D CAD model design, the design process is mainly concerned with the creation of geometric product data (e.g. lines, faces and surfaces) of a component or assembly. The resulting CAD product data is generally complete in terms of its geometry (math data). The design process may also include non-geometric data, such as part cost, manufacture, etc. However the non-geometric CAD data is typically incomplete. There are several reasons for this: 1) Lack of Robustness—most CAD systems have some form of non-geometric data, but it usually takes the form of simple labels, dimensions, and notes. The non-geometric data lacks sufficient detail either about the assembly's or component's design/manufacturing specifications or design intent. It is relatively unorganized and has very limited querying and reporting mechanisms. 2) Lack of Granularity—most CAD systems only enable the designer to relate non-geometric data to a whole piece of geometry. For instance, non-geometric data can be related to a whole part, or the whole assembly, but not to an individual face or feature, of which there are 100's to 1,000's. 3) Lack of Exchange Standard—most CAD systems offer the capability of relating non-geometric data to their system's geometric data. However the format of the data is proprietary and during electronic exchanges or format translations much of the data is lost. This makes it very difficult to work with the non-geometric data associated with CAD product data outside the context of the original CAD system that generated the native data.
These issues limit the usefulness of the CAD product data for other downstream activities, for example, preparing bids or responding to quotes, tool design, engineering analysis, automated inspection, and documentation. It also makes supply chain partner activities almost impossible. To overcome these limitations the user must often contact multiple people within the supply chain multiple times to collect the non-geometric data they need in order to put the CAD product data into a form they can use. This process is usually time consuming and expensive. Considering that even a small product may contain tens of assemblies and hundreds of components supplied by tens of partners in a supply chain, this lack of completeness ‘robs’ the entire supply chain of tremendous profits in the form of increased costs and repeatedly delayed time-to-market.
Therefore there is a need for an information management system which, while independent of any CAD system, enables any user to add, edit, view, query and report on non-geometric data associated with any level of geometric data.